Outdoors vs Indoors

Some people complain about spending time outdoors. They’re real complainers.

If human beings were meant to be rained on, we would have been born with umbrellas on our heads, they say. We don’t have natural shoes or tough skin. We also lack the fur necessary to keep warm. (Although, can someone please explain to me why the furriest people tend to wear Hawaiian shirts and congregate in southern Florida?)

The indoor wimps say that they’re not opposed to nature, per se. They just prefer to bring nature indoors where they can control it better. Apparently, they feel like they can breathe a little easier with a dying ficus in the corner of the living room and welcome a favorite animal indoors even if it means complaining that they use the house like a bathroom (heathens!)

My experience tells me that not all indoor nature is good for the indoor crowd, though. If you want genuine entertainment, let a tarantula loose in the house and wait for your loved ones to crawl along the ceiling and jump out a window. Good times. (I wonder when the wife will come home.)

Outdoor bugs are evil things, let’s be honest. I have yet to meet someone who likes the Minnesota state bird (mosquito), the invisible scourge of Texas (chiggers), or Florida’s overlords (cockroaches). These things aren’t to be liked. The only appropriate response to them is hatred, fear, and fodder for practical jokes.

And don’t even get me started on the likelihood of getting lost when you walk more than ten feet off a well-paved path. (But, since you got me started…) “It was great. I thought I’d just see that pristine mountain valley, got lost, had to drink dirty, guardia-invested water, fend off a bear, and needed to be rescued by Harrison Ford. Let’s do it again next weekend”…said no one, ever.

I suppose all of those concerns are valid, as far as it goes. Unfortunately there are some of us who just can’t be kept indoors. Doesn’t matter how wonderful the air conditioning is, how easy it is to nuke a burrito, or how “can’t miss” the television show is, we just end up outside again.

Would it kill you to just spend one day inside? Yes, yes it just might.